Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/936

898 half a dozen gentlemen were present at the meeting of the Woman's League, yesterday. Although more than one of the speakers bewailed the delinquency of the "friends of the negro" in failing to supply the League with the necessary funds, yet the piles of post-paid circulars on the tables, ready for the mail, were larger than ever. There was also a bundle of tracts on emancipation as the only means o: peace.

The meeting being called to order, a committee reported a series of resolutions, the gist of which was that, whereas the League is continually receiving from its friends to whom it applies for pecuniary assistance communications stating that the day for petition and discussion is past, and that the bullet and bayonet are now working out the stern logic of events; nevertheless the League considers that such day is not past, and it urges the friends of the negro to come forward boldly and pour out of their abundance liberally for its aid.

Miss Susan B. Anthony made a speech arguing that the decision of the anti-slavery question should not be left to the "stern logic of events'? which is wrought by the bullet and the bayonet. More knowledge is needed. The eyes and the ears of the whole public are now open. It should be the earnest work of every lover of freedom to give those eyes the right thing to see and those ears the right thing to hear. It pains her to receive in answer to a call for assistance and funds, letters saying that the day for discussion and petition is past. It looks.as if we had returned to the old condition of barbarism, where no way is known of settling questions except by fighting. Women, who are noted for having control of the moral department of society and for lifting the other half of the race into a higher moral condition, should not relapse into the idea that the status of any human being is to be settled merely by the sword. Miss Anthony then spoke of the constitutional right of Congress to pass an emancipation law. She read a letter from a lady who, on receiving documents from the League, first doubted the power of Congress to pass such a law; then she thought perhaps it had; then she compared the petition and the Constitution; then she thought it had no such power, and finally she concluded to circulate the petition anyhow. Miss Anthony proceeded at some length to expound the Constitution, showing that it does not say that slaves shall not be emancipated, and therefore concluding that they may. But if Congress can not emancipate slaves constitutionally, it should do so unconstitutionally. She does not believe in this red-tapism that can not find a law to suppress the wrong, but always finds one to oppress the innocent. If she was a mayor, or a governor, or a legislator, and there was no law to punish mobocrats, she thought she should go to work to make one pretty quick. She requested the opinion of some gentleman.

A gentleman present related a number of touching incidents about the recent mobbing of negroes in this city, most of which have already appeared in print in this and other papers. Miss Anthony held up two photographs to the view of the audience. One represented  Sojourner Truth, the heroine of one of Mrs. H. B. Stowe's tales, and the other the bare back of a Louisiana slave. Many of the audience were affected to tears. "Sojourner Truth" had lost three fingers of one hand, and the Louisiana slave's back bore sears of whipping. She asked every one to suppose that woman was her mother, and that man her father. In that case would they think the time past for discussion and petition? The resolutions were at once unanimously passed. The meeting adjourned.

Miss Susan B. Anthony is now on her homeward way from Kansas, where she has been spending several of the past months, and where she has performed much excellent service in the cause of the freedmen of the country generally. She has recently visited Chicago and given a lecture, which is highly commended by the Tribune and Republican of that city, the latter giving an extended report of it in its columns, besides pronouncing upon it very flattering encomiums, concluding with these words: "The audience dwelt with thoughtful and marked interest upon her words, and when occasionally her remarks called forth an irrepressible burst of feeling, the applause was marked and emphatic, without descending to a noisy disturbance.'? Of the lecture in general, the Chicago Tribune thus speaks: